Persistent Deputy Arrests 2 In Attack

May 26, 1986|By Dianne Selditch of The Sentinel Staff

An Orange County deputy sheriff's determination led to the arrests of two men Sunday charges including kidnapping and attempted murder.

Deputy John Moch's pursuit began about 3 a.m. Sunday when he was called to Sand Lake Villas apartments in south Orlando, where he found Michael F. Gilbert, 35, Winter Park, in the parking lot bleeding from knife wounds.

It ended about four hours later when Moch arrested Thomas Leugers, 21, and Jackie Ray Higginbotham Jr., 29, both of Orlando.

Leugers was charged with armed robbery, kidnapping, aggravated battery, false imprisonment, aggravated assault and attempted murder. Higginbotham was charged with kidnapping, false imprisonment and attempted murder. Both were being held without bond in the Orange County Jail.

According to Moch, Gilbert said he was outside a bar on Fairbanks Avenue near Winter Park, when three men grabbed him, threw him into a car and handcuffed his hands behind his back.

The men hit him, bloodied his nose, stuck a five-inch knife to his throat and stabbed him in the ribs. Gilbert told Moch the men wanted sex, then money, but he refused both.

After Gilbert gave his attackers a false number for his bank card, he was dumped onto the parking lot where Moch found him.

''He was scared to death. He was scared they'd kill him. He was shaking like a leaf,'' Moch said.

On a hunch, Moch went to a bar on South Orange Blossom Trail in Orlando. There he found a man who had been at the bar on Fairbanks Avenue. The man and Gilbert were able to help Moch track one of the men to Tinsley Gardens Apartments on Oak Ridge Road.

There, deputies found the car, a 1975 gray Oldsmobile Cutlass, that matched the one in which Gilbert had been abducted.

Once the car owner's apartment had been located, the victim and the bar patron identified two men inside as the attackers.

Moch also found a pair of bloody handcuffs and a bloody knife in the apartment. He was assisted in the arrest by three other deputies.

''Everything was in our favor,'' Moch said. ''We tried one thing, then another. I just couldn't see these guys getting away.''